Utilitarianism and the So-Called Culture of Life

I was disappointed but hardly surprised to find that a local 'Bible-believing' church leader posted anti-Covid material on Facebook.

In this case he couldn't believe the 'libtards' made such a big deal about a virus that only had a .004% death rate.

Of course if he had bothered to do some simple math he would find that even with a death rate of four-tenths of one-percent, when factored into a population of say, 300 million, it results in over one million deaths – which is exactly the result in the United States.

And worse, not every American has contracted Covid. At this point no one is sure of the exact number, estimates ranging from half to three-quarters of the population. As such, with over one million deaths, the death rate is certainly higher than .004.

Apparently over a million deaths – is just a pedestrian statistic, nothing to be concerned about, certainly nothing to warrant any kind of measures or mitigation, let alone inconvenience. This is the Christian response or so we're led to believe. This is how we love our neighbour, by simply shrugging our shoulders as they die. This is how we testify to the love of Christ and the ethics of the Kingdom, by demanding our 'rights', filing lawsuits, and mocking those who attempt to stop the proliferation of the disease.

This particular church leader is sold out to libertarianism as his social media page makes clear. Thomas Sowell is his favorite economic commentator (I can't quite bring myself to call him an economist). The rest of his posts are consumed with a zealous affection for cryptocurrency, trashing the Federal Reserve, posts about Trump, guns, the Covid conspiracy, and anti-vaxx material, the majority of which is complete nonsense that takes about sixty seconds to debunk – and I'm not just talking about the Covid and vaccine material.

He claims to head a Bible-believing congregation, but it's clear enough his epistemological foundation is more along the lines of what I habitually refer to as BibleFOX, a syncretism at best, another belief system (with a little Biblical ornamentation) at worst.

Therefore it is no wonder that he has no sense of ethics. The religion of the New Testament is not only foreign to him, he is in fact hostile to it. He cannot even be inconvenienced in order to save lives and his 'rights' override and subordinate the imperatives of Christ and the apostles.

And by the way based on my own experience in a rural area, I am inclined to argue the death rate is actually much higher. The official numbers are certainly a significant under-count.

While this libertarian rails against 'libtards' I'm afraid we must conclude that his leadership in the context of the Church is actually a form of Divine Judgment. Libertarianism is not compatible with New Testament Christianity.

An even greater irony is found in the constant Evangelical hammering about the Culture of Life and the Culture of Death. This is largely a form of disingenuous moralised window dressing for what is otherwise a political argument. It's demagoguery, meant to appeal to and manipulate the Evangelical audience. The fact that lost people are distorted in their thinking and ethics is hardly surprising. Lost people treating life as cheap is to be expected.     

However honesty demands that we reject those who profess to be pro-life or to promote a culture of life when in fact they often exhibit the most callous attitudes toward death – like scoffing at over a million dead. And worse, when they speak out against abortion and euthanasia targeting the weak, it's clear they have no moral standing as they are more than willing to let the immunocompromised and the elderly die. How often have I heard that 'it's just the old people' or those who are already unhealthy that die from Covid. Therefore, there's no impetus to engage in any kind of mitigation efforts. Let them stay housebound, or take personal measures but otherwise they're on their own – if they die, they die.

Just the other day an activist on Evangelical radio decried the Utilitarian ethic that dominates the Culture of Death, that's willing to let the weak and non-contributing members of society die as they have no value.

This in fact is the ethic of most Evangelicals and the entire Christian Right. Their ethics are not Christian nor do they have anything to do with Scripture. They are the Utilitarian ethics of the Enlightenment that are more rooted in Libertarian and Capitalist ethics than anything else. And Covid revealed this in stark, even harsh terms. The people who proclaim to uphold the Culture of Life have embraced Libertarian individualist ethics which are far more compatible with godless Darwinism than Christianity. If they would look in the mirror they would discover that in fact the economic and social ethic they embrace can be summed up with a simple phrase – Survival of the Fittest. Capitalism and Libertarianism have led them (practically speaking) to a Darwinist ethic. They have lost their way.

Once again this is nothing less than judgment as the American Church is increasingly handed over to false teachers, blind guides, and bestial theologians that justify their wickedness. Peace, peace – all is well, God's not angry with us – just the libtards. So let's destroy them and conquer all! This is the guiding ethos of the Church of Mammon, which would include the congregation of this so-called church leader.

He can chase the false hopes and false gold that Wall Street offers and pretend to care about life even as his mammon ideology slaughters his neighbours as well as the poor and destitute around the globe. What a travesty, what a grotesque distortion of New Testament Christianity.